1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to butchering equipment and, more particularly, to a device for forming, interleaving and dispensing patties of chopped meat or other food.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the increased popularity of hamburgers, many machines have been developed to manufacture preformed hamburgers for use in restaurants, fast-food retailing outlets and for sale in supermarkets. Most of these machines are designed to take prechopped meat and form it into meat patties of a predetermined size in diameter and thickness, then interleave sheets of separating paper between the individual meat patties formed, and then stack or dispense the patties in conveninet stacks for further handling.
One of the major problems that has been encountered with the operation of these machines has been the interleaving and dispensing mechanisms of these machines. Specifically, it is found that it has been difficult to provide machines which can uniformly and accurately interleave a sheet of separating paper between the patties formed by the machine and then, after the interleaving process is completed, stack the interleaved patties so that they can be handled further.
The problems with the interleaving and stacking are in two major areas. The first is with respect to the synchronized positioning of a single, individual sheet of paper below each meat patty produced by the machine, and the second is the problem of effectively stacking the patties. For example, the machines shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,347,176, 3,461,483, and 3,488,918, all provide single sheeets of paper by slicing these sheets from a long, continuous roll of paper. This system has proved less than successful because of the possible difficulties arising from the slicing operation of the paper. If the knife which is used to cut the paper does not properly function, the paper will not be provided in time to intercept or be below patty which is produced by the machine.
Other machines, such as the one shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,347,176, even provide a means for interleaving the patties which requires that a sheet of paper and a patty meet in midair, and then fall to a predetermined depositing area.
The second problem concerns the stacking of the interleaved patties. This problem has been even more difficult to resolve than the problem of providing the individual sheets of interleaving paper in synchronized relationship. Most often, for one reason or another, the patty with the paper beneath it will not fall to a proper depositing area in a truly horizontal attitude. Instead, the interleaved patty will land on one edge or another and, therefore, tend to tip over any stack which has been formed, causing problems in handling of the output of the patty forming machine.
Attempts to properly align the interleaved patties have not proved completely successful. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,918 provides a wire flipper apparatus to hold a sheet of interleaving paper. These wire flippers are supposed to be moved out of the way by the weight of the falling patty. However, springs are connected to the flippers to return the flippers to the initial position for supporting the paper. Since these springs must exert an increasing force on the flippers as they move apart, the motion of the flippers will tend to slow in proportion to distance between the flippers. Therefore, near the maximum displacement of the flippers, the motion will be slowest, so that there is a tendency for the flippers not to move fast enough to allow the falling patty and interleaving paper to fall without catching one or both of the flippers.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,461,483; 3,126,683, and 3,388,529 all use a fixed frame which is supposed to have a hollow or an empty middle section just slightly smaller than the size of the individual sheets, so that the individual sheets will be supported at their peripheral edges and will be deformed sufficiently by the weight of the patty to fall through the frame to thereby fall in an even stack beneath the paper holding frame.
None of these patents, however, show a means for positively aligning the patty on the paper, which are actuated by the falling patty, and which when actuated will move in a manner that will insure a rapid movement of the support means out of the path of travel of the falling patty and interleaving sheet, to insure that the patty will fall in a uniform, erect stack.